She crept into her sister’s room, but Jeanne was already asleep, illuminated by moonlight. Tess sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress, hoping Jeanne would open her eyes. She didn’t, which pierced Tessie to the heart. Once Jeanne would have sensed her there; once there’d been a bond of steel between them, but Tess had selfishly broken it. Ashamed, she skulked back to the room where she now slept alone, which had once been Seraphina’s.
As the patron Saints of comedy and tragedy would have it, the next day brought a carriage with the royal crest to their door. No fanfare—it was only Seraphina, deigning to descend from on high. Papa was at Count Julian’s, humiliating himself for employment, but Seraphina wasn’t here for him today. Mama led her into the parlor, offered tea as if she were a duchess, and hollered for the twins—unnecessarily, since they were listening at the door. Jeanne bounded in first; that is, she glided like a swan. Only the keen eyes of her twin knew this for unbridled enthusiasm. She perched on the edge of a chair, vibrant as a canary. Tess, by contrast, slouched in and tried to bury herself in the cushions of the couch.
“Tessie, sit up,” Mama admonished. Tess wiggled as if she were trying.
“I come bearing news,” said Seraphina, eyeing Tess. She looked suspicious, though she couldn’t have been. No one yet knew the news Tess was bearing.
“I’ve secured two positions,” Seraphina continued. “Jeanne may accompany Tessie to court, beginning next month. They’ll attend on Lady Farquist, who’s like a dear old auntie to all the young lords. You’ll finally meet some eligible bachelors, Tess.” Seraphina capped off this pronouncement with a suggestive wink; Anne-Marie swatted her arm.
Tessie burst into tears.
She couldn’t go. There was no way. In another month, her belly would be swollen beyond easy concealment, and then? How long did it take to grow a baby? Mama had been pregnant forever with Neddie.
“Tess, stop being melodramatic,” snapped Mama. “However moved you may be, these over-the-top displays are inappropriate. People will think—”
Tess flopped onto her side, keening, which cut the lecture short. Mama’s mouth hung open, as if it began to occur to her that Tess’s sobbing portended something serious. Jeanne rushed to Tess’s side, faithful and unquestioning, pushing Tess’s damp hair out of her face and handing her handkerchiefs. “My love, what’s wrong?”
Seraphina raised her eyebrows, as if waiting for someone to explain this outburst.
“I can’t…,” Tess moaned. She was sweating and dizzy, and was Jeanne wearing perfume? It was ten times stronger than it needed to be; it turned her stomach. “Mama, I can’t go.”
“What do you mean, you can’t go?” said Mama dangerously. “We’ve been training you to fulfill this duty for almost two years.”
Tess heaved for air, fearing she’d faint, wishing she would. Jeanne propped her up, muttering soothingly. Tess’s thoughts jumbled—how did her mortifying story begin? With the World Serpents, or Kenneth, or natural philosophy? With “Will promised he’d marry me” or “Will is gone, and no one knows where,” or…Saints in Heaven, Will was gone and he’d taken everything with him and left her to carry this on her own and she couldn’t….
She was burning up, a sour-salty taste rising in her throat.
“Mama, I’m sorry. I’ve ruined myself. I’ve ruined everything,” was the last thing she managed to say before all of her breakfast and all of her dinner and all of the food she’d ever eaten—it felt like—plus all her guts and dreams and future came hurtling up out of her depths and splattered upon the wooden floor.
* * *
Jeanne, it was determined, would go to court on time; someone had to. She’d take Tess’s place as Lady Farquist’s maid of the robes, and Tess’s place in the hierarchy of marriageability and family-saving. Jeanne, presumably, should have been the elder twin to begin with, if she hadn’t politely allowed Tessie to exit the womb first. It was just like Jeanne to do that.
It was just like Tessie to elbow past her sister, thinking of no one but herself.
Papa, in an unprecedented convulsion of paternal conscience, wanted to find Will and either kill him or drag him back to marry Tess. Mama felt this would merely draw attention to their daughter’s disgrace, jeopardizing Jeanne’s prospects. Seraphina suggested Tess might go on pilgrimage, which was met with eye-rolling all around (nothing says surprise pregnancy like a pilgrimage), but then she hit upon the idea of Dombegh Manor, and that seemed to suit everyone.
Everyone but Tess, who didn’t count. She’d forfeited everything.
Belgiosos swarmed over Lavondaville like termites in a hollow tree, but Tess had never met the Dombegh side of the family. Papa’s elder brother—Jean-Philippe, Baronet Dombegh—and his ancient mother, Therese, were ensconced in the deep country and never came to town. Tess’s story could be whatever her parents decided it should be; no one would check.
In an act of (wholly characteristic) filial piety, therefore, Tess had insisted upon attending her Grandma Therese’s final days, or so the story went. Tess would come to court later—dear, tenderhearted girl!—to attend upon her sister. She was as selfless and giving and dutiful as one could hope for in a daughter, and Anne-Marie Dombegh (née Belgioso) felt blessed every day.
Tess, now famously pious and compliant, was bundled off to Dombegh Manor in the middle of the night.
* * *
Uncle Jean-Philippe, Baronet Dombegh, was a portly, mustachioed man, what Papa might have looked like if he’d spent forty years eating, drinking, and chasing women instead of fretting, lying, and cringing. The baronet met Tess outside the house and, even though she was clearly exhausted from her night-long ride, he walked her to the village first. “Your grandmother is napping,” he explained, “and she’ll be a shrieking, disoriented harpy if we wake her too soon.”
Tess barely heard him. She stumbled along, sights rolling off her like water off a goose’s back. Uncle Jean-Philippe introduced her to the midwife, Chessey, a stout, middle-aged woman with a mess of chestnut hair going gray at the temples. Her eyes were bright and clever as a crow’s, and she had a faint mustache, which made her look a little like a bear.
“You’ll be in excellent hands, niece,” said Uncle Jean-Philippe. “She’s caught all my illegitimate issue, twenty-six and counting. ‘Old Bastard-Catcher,’ I call her.”
“There’ve been twenty-three, m’lord,” said Chessey, curtsying. “You must’ve got your imagination pregnant, too.”
Tess was too numb to find the joke appalling; she didn’t even feel hurt when her uncle called her “little slut” as they were leaving. Chessey’s mouth turned down in a scowl.
Tess’s grandmother Therese had awakened by the time they returned. A harried maidservant led the bony old woman into the parlor. “It’s your granddaughter,” the maid explained loudly—for the umpteenth time, to gauge by her exasperation. “Claude’s little girl.”
“Who?” cried the dowager baroness. She was in her dressing gown, her cobwebby hair loose around her shoulders; her eyes rolled like a panicking horse’s. When she spotted Tess, she froze. “No, it can’t be,” she said, tears welling up. “Agnes, my love. You came back.”
She threw her arms around Tess as if greeting a long-lost sister—no, not as if. She was doing exactly that. Her grief pierced Tess’s veil of numbness, and then they were both weeping and clutching each other under the scornful eye of Uncle Jean-Philippe.
“I’m so pleased you like your namesake, Mother,” he said nastily.
Grandma Therese scowled, as though he were some intruding ape, and led Tess to a musty couch. She pulled Tess onto the seat beside her and whispered loudly, “Ignore that lout I married, Agnes. He’s a liar who only wanted to hide behind my good name. I should’ve followed your example and been happy, rather than let his title and money tempt me.”
“I can hear you,” cried Uncle Jean-Philippe across the parlor. “And you’ve mistaken me for Father again, you old buzzard. Do you even remember the names of your sons?”